


whenever I'm alone with you

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [89]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Family Dynamics, Feanor is a background menace, Fingolfin and Anaire are actually couple goals, quiet romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 10:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19105609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Anaire is content with Finwe's second son, if not always with herself.





	whenever I'm alone with you

 “Three sons,” Maman says eagerly. “All very eligible, or soon to be.”

Anaire plucks at the skirt of her new organdy dress, very frilled and furbelowed, and wishes that Papa had left them a little poorer. But no; that is a wicked thought. She does not want to be  _poor_ , she only wants to be—unnoticed. Not the sort of girl fitted out in frocks and beribboned bonnets, ever-concerned about the eligible young men of New York.

If they were  _comfortable_ , but in need of a little more money and a little less society, Anaire might be able to work herself. She could keep Maman in a little house near the river, surely, by selling her embroidery.

Anaire is proud of her embroidery. She is also only sixteen.

 

Finwe the Irishman—so his critics and fanatics alike call him—began as a steelworker and now knows more about steel than anybody on the East Coast. He has recently removed from Philadelphia, and set up a fine house near Valinor Park. Like Papa, he was deemed a hero of the last war. Unlike Papa, he lived.

He has (gossip reports) three sons. The eldest is apprenticed in Boston. The younger two are finishing their studies in Manhattan, and are, Maman insists, very handsome.

 

_“Do you mind that we…that our marriage was somewhat arranged?”_

_He frowns. He turns towards her, and when he crooks one elbow and props his head against his hand, he looks young._

_(He is young.)_

_“I don’t remember it being arranged.”_

_She blushes. “Maman…had her sights on you from the first.”_

_Fingolfin’s lips twitch into a smile. “You did not have to tell me that. She practically joined our hands at my father’s dance.”_

_Anaire sighs. The pillow beneath her head is soft, yet her neck is stiff and her teeth are clenched. She shouldn’t—she shouldn’t be_ dull _, worrying over the same staid origins of a story already begun._

_A tear leaks from the corner of her eye. She didn’t mean to tell him like this._

_“Anaire.” He reaches for her, and his hand halts hovering over her shoulder, for though they are married Fingolfin is careful of touching her. Tender, as if she is likely to break—and he the one most likely to do the breaking. “It wasn’t arranged.”_

_She puts her hand on his hand, drawing it down. Feeling the warmth of him. “Wasn’t it?”_

_“Not by anyone else but ourselves. I…” he clears his throat. A funny little sound in the near-dark. “I loved you at once.”_

_As ever, he has put her in debt to him. She shivers as the pad of his thumb traces the crest of her shoulder, and she says, “I did not want to speak of it. I only wanted us to be very certain, because—”_

(Fingon is born in May.)

 

Nerdanel is frightening. That is—she is very warm, and very effortless, and very beautiful in a way that Maman insists she does not understand at all.

 _She cares not about being beautiful_ , Anaire told her, once, when Maman praised Anaire’s superior neck and ankles until her voice was lost with coughs.Maman is ailing (she was always delicate), but she still attends dinners under Finwe’s invitations and sniffs her judgment of his eldest son and that eldest son’s family.

Anaire ought not to let Maman’s judgments poison  _her_. Maman was not strictly right about Fingolfin, either; she believed, as the second son, that he would be easily led. Rather, he is eminently dependable, and secretly romantic, and kinder than a brother (even a half-brother) of Feanor’s has a right to be.

Maybe it is not Nerdanel who frightens Anaire after all.

 

“May I hold him, Aunt?” chirps little Maedhros, and he looks so sweet and confident, with his bright ducktail of red-gold hair slicked down under his collar, that she hands over baby Turgon with surprising ease.

“Be gentle with him,” she murmurs, and Nerdanel, coming close behind with fat, wriggling Celegorm at her hip, says,

“Maitimo is  _always_  gentle with babies.”

Anaire is afraid of Nerdanel again.

“ _Bà i ù o hò…Gheibh thu bainne bhuam_ ,” Maedhros sings, rocking Turgon in his arms.

“He is the best brother anyone could ask for.” Nerdanel’s voice is soft and proud.

Beside Anaire, Fingon blinks his round eyes, receiving it all in silence.

Anaire does not put an arm around him, since that might seem like comfort more for herself than him, but she wants to.

 

“Why were you married  _last_ , Papa?” Aredhel demands, poking at Fingolfin’s buttons. He has a great deep furrow in his brow and the newspaper is a little crumpled in his left hand.

“Eh, what?”

(This is how Fingolfin will look when he is old. Frowning and reading newspapers.)

Anaire is rather too tired to speak up, but she smiles. Argon is curled up on the settle near her, and Fingon and Turgon have their schoolbooks at the desks by the far windows.

“Uncle Feanor was married first, and Uncle Finarfin was married next, and then you  _waited_.” Now Aredhel plays with the loose end of a hair-ribbon. “Why is that? Didn’t you love Mama?”

Fingolfin puts the paper down.

_I loved you at once._

Smile lines (Anaire’s favorite lines) crinkle at the corners of his eyes. “I was rather afraid she wouldn’t have me,” Fingolfin says, very gravely.

Fingon and Turgon both look up.

Argon squeals excitedly, missing the substance of the conversation in his excitement over one word. “ _Afraid_? Papa, you were  _scared_?”

Fingolfin’s lips press together, which means he is trying not to laugh. The children don’t always know that. “A little, son. You see how gracious and beautiful your mother is.”

“How sweet,” Fingon breathes, grinning, and then he turns back to his books. Turgon squirms.

Anaire wishes her body was stronger, so she could give Fingolfin more children to surpass her in grace and beauty both.

 

_“Miss Etienne.” The dark-haired boy bows._

_“Master Finwean.”_

_“Dance with one another,_ mes jeunes, _” Maman exclaims, forcing Anaire’s silk glove towards Fingolfin’s kid glove, and when the music starts, Anaire is sure, is_ sure _she will faint._

_“I can dance a little,” the boy says stiffly. His cheeks are pink. “If you don’t mind.”_

_(He is the most beautiful dancer she has ever seen, much less followed.)_

“I  _hate_  him.” The words taste ugly, and not like her own, but for once Anaire revels in her shortness of breath.

Fingolfin does not. His arms close around her like a shield. “Don’t, I pray you. It is not—”

“Over and over he is scornful and rude and  _cruel_.” Her eyes swim. “I just, I can’t bear it anymore…”

She feels him stiffen.

She feels utterly guilty. (Has Nerdanel ever—ever felt  _shame_ , or  _guilt_ , for what Feanor lives and does?)

“I did not mean that, husband.” But already he is guiding her to her chaise, and he is kneeling beside her and chafing her trembling hands, and the words don’t matter.

Anaire reaches up and brushes black and grey from that strong forehead. “I will bear anything for you.”

 

Even when he asks her to leave her home, she means it.

**Author's Note:**

> Mae sings a Scots Gaelic lullaby about milk and holding babies.


End file.
